Real hard. His parents shopped around high schools in order to further his career. He got terrible grades. Still got a shot at USC with a scholarship and turned it down. He is going to have to start at the bottom.

My brother coached him for a few years in high school. He was a good kid when I knew him. I don’t think you can ever be prepared for that kind of money and success when you are 19 years old. You need a really strong family behind you looking out for you. Really sad

Sometimes starting at the bottom is the best thing for a young person. Hopefully it will be in this case. If he has to pay for an education now, he’ll appreciate it more than he would have a USC scholarship.

There was a very interesting ESPN documentary delving into how and why so many athletes end up being broke within years of leaving their respective sports careers. While the documentary broke the reasons up, for instance bad investment deals, bad management deals (primarily by family), lack of savings/conservative money decisions, divorce (big), child support (with the payments not being adjusted when the person stops making the big bucks), fraud, gambling, etc etc - all these reasons can be largely summed up into a life style that does not take into consideration that the earnings are no longer there. Someone like Michael Jordan (even though he is 50 and long retired) can spend (almost) as much as he wants and not worry, since he still has a lot of income coming in.

However, most athletes, like the chap in this article, simply go from huge earnings to very little once they leave. Yet, their lifestyles are still largely the same! For the vast majority of athletes within 2 years they are in big trouble - now, assuming they are married (and like many, married for looks) that's around when divorces are touching down. Some also have child support payments that they never took the time to have adjusted downwards once they left sports. With bad financial management (with most investing in risky 'sexy' investments like PE rather than 'boring' bonds) and bad managers (mostly friends and family) these guys really have nothing left.

As someone in the documentary said, it's living a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget. It is hard to notice the funding gap when the big money is coming in, but once the spigot is turned off it becomes quickly apparent (hmmm ...I just realized this could apply to the US economy).

Finally, considering that a lot of them started getting crazy money in their late teens/early twenties, with no personal financial skills (for pizza money let alone multi million dollar deals), it is easy to see how they end up blowing their futures. Many of them, like college students who think credit cards are 'free money,' forget (or don't realize) that their earnings are to last a lifetime (unless like Jordan or Lebron they don't have to). Thus, rather than limiting spending to 'only' 300,000 per year, they spend 3 million. Three to five years later, especially after adding bad investments, they money is depleted, if not gone.

The only athletes who are fortunate not to fall into this trap are those who have financial management skills, good financial planners (that invest in conservative avenues and not restaurants or cutting edge tech PE), and limit spending to 'rich' rather than 'opulent mogul.' Otherwise, the athlete better be making Lebron/Jordan money (although those two do manage their money VERY well - I am only using them as examples of people who make enough that they really don't need to be that meticulous). Anyone else ...if you don't have Lebron money, and you don't manage your investments well, in three years (after retirement) the money will be gone.

I have no sympathy for him. He had a gift and squandered it. Don’t blame his parents, although they had a roll. I had parents who were not the interested in what I was doing either. While I didn’t have this man’s talent, I wasn’t dumb enough to not learn the value of a dollar.

Too bad for him and he is still too stupid to know that the bank is going to move him out of the residence he can’t make payments on because of the decisions he made, like all those tats instead of investing in revenue generating instruments.

He can always hang and finish drywall. I watched a show about broke athletes and one of them was a former NBA player who was broke. He made a living doing drywall and because of his height he was very good at it.

After he flamed out, he became one of the league's most notorious cautionary tales for the dangers of leaping straight from high school to the pros.

I wonder if the ones who spent a year in college "punching their ticket" have shown a greater acumen for fiscal restraint than those who went straight from high school to the NBA. Notice that baseball players, most of whom spend a couple of years riding a bus and living on a much smaller salary in the minors, don't have nearly as many spectacular financial flame outs.

“I wonder if the ones who spent a year in college “punching their ticket” have shown a greater acumen for fiscal restraint than those who went straight from high school to the NBA.”

In this regard, it would be interesting to see what the stats are for the ‘one year, jump to the NBA’ are for the University of Kentucky. UK recruits big, wins tournaments, and sends ‘em off to the NBA. How many are still makin’ it 3 years outa the NBA?

27
posted on 02/24/2013 8:00:33 PM PST
by GGpaX4DumpedTea
(I am a Tea Party descendant...steeped in the Constitutional Republic given to us by the Founders.)

It does not have to be this way. An engineering colleague had a short NFL career after college, short due to injuries. The difference was he got a real degree, worked as a co-op in a refinery, so he had some real job skills to fall back on. He also did not make the mistake of “living large” like a lot of pro rookies do. So at the end of his NFL career, it was back to the refineries. And he has done quite well.

29
posted on 02/24/2013 8:12:25 PM PST
by Fred Hayek
(The Democratic Party is now the operational arm of the CPUSA)

i saw that show. it reminded me of an article i had read somewhere else. This fellow who plays for the timberwolves makes a bundle but has invested, lives a regular joe lifestyle and so on, the interesting part of the article was about players who blow through cash like water. Ron artest was mentioned. Apparently he had/has a house full of dogs but they soil the carpet so much that Ron spends 5,000$ each month to have the carpet replaced. You have to wonder how else he blows through his cash

30
posted on 02/24/2013 8:15:00 PM PST
by InvisibleChurch
(the mature Christian is almost impossible to offend)

There was a very interesting ESPN documentary delving into how and why so many athletes end up being broke within years of leaving their respective sports careers.

I think you are talking about the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "Broke". I watched it with my teenage son. It's free to stream if you have Amazon Prime and sometimes shows up on demand or on one of the ESPN channels. Well worth watching.

I worked with a lot of Japanese nationals at one point, and figured at 5-7, Id be a power forward in Japan, LOL.

I have to wonder what part of that is due to nutrition. Food in Japan is extremely expensive, because of protectionist measures that are part political and part national security related. For instance, beef is $10 a pound, apples are $2.49 each and *rice* is $1.50 a lb (compared to rice prices that average $0.50 a lb stateside).

32
posted on 02/24/2013 9:04:24 PM PST
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

You are talking the old days I assume ...Average height of 20 something US men is around 5 foot 9 today . Japanese just a shade under 2 inches shorter on average .

I have to wonder how much of that height difference is due to diet. I have heard food in Japan is crazy expensive. Not that you know offhand, but out of curiosity, what's a pound of chicken leg quarters, pork shoulder and chuck steak cost in Japan? I have heard rice is $1.50 a lb or about triple what we pay stateside.

33
posted on 02/24/2013 9:17:19 PM PST
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

Since the dishes here are different , meats are generally cut / sliced differently than in the USA . There is not meat sold with bones still attached for example . No leg quarters or pork shoulder . Despite the recent rise of the US dollar - to around 94 yen to a dollar - it’s still in the toilet compared to years ago , so there is no point quoting prices at current exchange rates . Chicken is very reasonably prices , some cuts cheaper than in the US . Much of the pork we buy is from the USA , therefore inexpensive . Beef is high , but not that much higher than the USA unless you buy Japanese beef .

A few years ago one of the top NCAA basketball coaches went to China to host some baskeball clinics. He jokingly said that he encountered so many players over 7 feet tall that it lead him to believe that maybe China was conducting genetic experimentation............

Knowing what we do about that country's communist athletic system, there might be some truth to his statement.....

39
posted on 02/25/2013 3:55:35 AM PST
by Hot Tabasco
(Jab her with a harpoon or just throw her from the train......)

Stateside, per pound sale prices for cheap cuts of meat like boneless round steak, boneless thighs and boneless pork shoulder are $2, $1.30 and $1.50 respectively. I have heard that beef in Japan is $10 per pound

42
posted on 02/25/2013 2:12:39 PM PST
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

Times were tough for quite a few years after the war . My Japanese wife , now 61 ( I’m 60 ) , has told me stories about what the average person ate in those days . We had it SO good in America , but of course most Americans were happily unaware of just how tough it was here in Japan up until the early 60’s .

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